Re: [Shutup] [ietf-smtp] Proposed Charter for the "SMTP Headers Unhealthy To User Privacy" WG (fwd)

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

On 11/29/2015 9:12 AM, Chris Newman wrote:

> ====
> This WG will investigate mechanisms to conceal the information exposed
> by the submission client's IP address in the mandatory received header
> generated by the submission server. The output of this WG will provide a
> mechanism as effective at tracing abuse and fraud as current use of the
> submission client's IP address. Changing other rules related to received
> headers in SMTP is out of scope for this WG.
> ====


Chris's approach is reasonable, but I fear it is premature.

The foundational issue here is a trade-off between information hiding
and information disclosure.  Privacy vs. ops support.

I've seen essentially no public discussions, here or anywhere else,
about the technical aspects of this policy tradeoff.

Absent some community-based sense of the underlying technical issues
here, targeting a specification is, in my view, not ready for prime time.

d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net